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(NEW YORK) — The Mega Millions jackpot is closing in on another 10-digit jackpot in the billions after no ticket matched all six numbers that were drawn on Tuesday night.
The winning numbers that were drawn — the white balls 25, 29, 33, 41 and 44, plus the gold Mega Ball 18 — means that the estimated prize is now at an estimated $940 million — or a lump sum cash option of $483.5 million — for the next drawing which will take place this Friday evening.
“In more than 20 years since the game began in 2002, there have been just three larger jackpots than Friday’s estimated prize,” Mega Millions said in a statement announcing that nobody had won the Mega Millions jackpot. “The Mega Millions record remains $1.537 billion, won by a single ticket in South Carolina on October 23, 2018. Two years ago, a $1.05 billion prize was won in Michigan on January 22, 2021, and there was that big $1.337 billion jackpot won in Illinois last July.”
There have now been 23 consecutive drawings with no Mega Millions jackpot winner dating back to Oct. 14.
“Across the country, 68 tickets matched four white balls plus the Mega Ball to win the third-tier prize,” Mega Millions said. “Twelve of those tickets are worth $40,000 each, because they also included the optional Megaplier. The other 56 third-tier winning tickets are worth $10,000 each.”
In total, there were six Mega Millions jackpots awarded in 2022, ranging from $20 million in Tennessee to $1.337 billion in Illinois. The jackpot that was awarded in the latest win in October was $502 million, shared by winning tickets in California and Florida.
“Since the jackpot was last won on October 14, the number of winning tickets at all prize levels has grown to more than 22.7 million across the country through 23 drawings,” Mega Millions said. “These include 47 worth $1 million or more, won in 19 different states from coast to coast: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.”
The drawing on Jan. 6 will be the second drawing of 2023 and, if nobody wins again, the jackpot will likely be estimated to be into the billions.
(NEW YORK) — A New Year’s Eve machete rampage targeting police officers in Times Square is the latest example of law enforcement failing to prevent an individual already on their radar from carrying out an act of violence, prompting some counterterrorism experts to call for a new model for evaluating would-be attackers.
The Times Square assault on three New York City police officers came just weeks after the suspect, 19-year-old Trevor Bickford of Maine, was placed on a federal watch list, authorities said. The FBI evaluated Bickford when his mother informed the agency he was gravitating toward Islamic extremism, officials said.
While Bickford was placed on a federal no-fly list, he took an Amtrak train to New York allegedly intent on attacking police officers, authorities said.
Bickford was taken into custody after being shot in the shoulder by a police officer. He is charged with two counts of attempted murder of a police officer and two counts of attempted assault. He remained in a hospital Tuesday evening, pending an arraignment.
John Cohen, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security acting undersecretary for intelligence, said the case is the latest in a string of attacks nationwide where law enforcement made contact with a suspect prior to an attack and assessed the potential for them to carry out a violent act.
“It has become increasingly clear that the protocols used by federal and local authorities to assess the risk posed by individuals who exhibit threat-related behaviors is out of date and inconsistent with the current threat facing the nation,” said Cohen, now an ABC News contributor.
Cohen noted that suspects in several recent mass casualty incidents had been evaluated by law enforcement prior to committing the acts of violence, including Payton Gendron, the teenager who pleaded guilty to killing 10 Black people in a racially motivated shooting in Buffalo, New York, and Nikolas Cruz, who pleaded guilty to killing 17 students in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Anderson Lee Aldrich, who allegedly killed five people and wounded 17 others at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado in November, had been arrested in 2001 on allegations of making a bomb threat that led to the evacuation of about 10 homes. A year before he killed eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis in 2021, Brandon Scott Hole was taken into custody by police and temporarily placed in a mental detention facility for further assessment after his mother complained he assaulted her when she asked what he was going to do with the gun, officials said.
Omar Mateen, who in 2016 killed 49 people and wounded 53 more in a mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, was allowed to legally purchase an AR-style rifle and a handgun despite his name appearing on a federal watch list after being interviewed three times by the FBI in the years leading up to the massacre at the gay nightclub, according to authorities.
“We’re still, from an investigator’s perspective, looking for that Mohamed Atta,” said Cohen, referring to one of the hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks. “We’re looking for somebody who we can associate with a foreign terrorist group or looking at somebody who meets the threshold of a federal terrorism investigation.”
Cohen added, “That’s why we continue to see instances where people come to the attention of the bureau or law enforcement, they’re assessed that way, they don’t meet that threshold, they don’t become the subject of a full-field investigation, yet they go out and commit an act of violence.”
Cohen said threats today are very different from ones the nation faced on Sept. 11, 2001.
“We’re not dealing with a group of sophisticated, ideologically motivated foreign terrorists. We’re dealing with individuals, all of which, regardless of the motive, are experiencing somewhat consistent behavioral health issues,” he said.
He said a better approach, increasingly adopted by state and local agencies, is to “look at individuals holistically” when they come to the attention of law enforcement.
“What it entails is that you have specially trained law enforcement working with mental health professionals. They look at individuals holistically. Maybe they come to the attention of law enforcement initially because of their online behavior, maybe it’s other behaviors they’re exhibiting that family or others observe,” Cohen said.
He said there are reams of data culled from mass shootings and terrorist attacks showing a common pattern of behavior in perpetrators that can be used in assessing risk.
“We’re dealing with individuals, all of which, regardless of the motive, are experiencing somewhat consistent behavioral health issues,” Cohen said. “They feel disconnected from community, they’re angry, they’re searching for a sense of life meaning, they come from dysfunctional family backgrounds, they spend a considerable amount of time online viewing content placed there by terrorist groups, by extremists, content regarding past shootings and other ideological or extremist content until ultimately they connect with something or a blend of beliefs, or a blend of beliefs and grievances.”
Cohen said much of the new model for assessing the risk of such individuals is detailed in a 2015 FBI report titled, “Making Prevention a Reality.”
“Threat assessment is a systematic, fact-based method of investigation and examination that blends the collection of analysis of multiple sources of information with published research and practitioner experience, focusing on an individual’s patterns of thinking and behavior to determine whether, and to what extent, a person of concern is moving toward an attack,” the report states.
The report adds, “By engaging in the assessment and management process as soon as a person of concern is identified, threat managers are more likely to succeed in preventing a violent outcome. Steering a person in a different direction early on may mean offering assistance to someone who needs it before that person concludes violence is necessary.”
Thomas Galati, NYPD Chief of Intelligence and Counterterrorism, said the suspect in Saturday night’s Times Square attack was interviewed by FBI agents last month in Maine after his mother reported concerns that her son was possibly becoming radicalized. The FBI determined Bickford allegedly wanted to fight in Afghanistan and placed him on a federal watch list to prevent him from traveling overseas, Galati said.
“The way you know they (the FBI) took the traditional approach is they viewed the primary threat as his travel to Afghanistan,” Cohen said. “So, they no-flyed him. They tried to restrict his ability to travel, but look what happened.”
By contrast, he noted a recent case in Maryland, where a teenager posted on Instagram that he wanted to shoot up his high school and was reported to a school resource officer by classmates.
“The school resource officer went to the threat management unit, which did a threat assessment and deemed the person to be high risk,” Cohen said. “They believed this person was on their way to engage in violence and they prevented it. They went to the courts, they invoked the red flag law. The person got additional mental health care.”
But Cohen conceded there are likely “thousands” of reports like the one flagged to authorities in Maryland.
“I acknowledge that it requires additional training, it requires resources, it requires a different way of looking at these issues,” Cohen said. “But the alternative is we continue to experience the weekly shootings or other mass casualty attacks that we seem to be experiencing today.”
(NEW YORK) — Iranian women were banned from the national soccer stadium and all live soccer games for more than 40 years, but that didn’t stop some women from defying the mandate.
A new ESPN 30 for 30 podcast called “Pink Card” follows three generations of women defying the ban.
Peabody Award-winning host and executive producer Shima Oliaee sat down with ABC News Live’s Phil Lipof to talk about bringing the fight toward freedom to life, her own personal identity as the daughter of her soccer-loving Iranian mom and how it all connects to the ongoing protests in Iran for women’s rights.
LIPOF:Shima, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Iranian women have been banned from watching soccer inside that stadium, we’re told, to allegedly prevent them from temptation of men’s bare legs. How did Iran’s national soccer stadium turn into a battleground for women’s rights?
OLIAEE: As soon as [former Supreme Leader Ruhollah] Khomeini came into power, basically, all of their legal rights started being stripped one by one. And by 1981, every woman was fully veiled. They went from very Parisian-like outfits, short miniskirts. My mom said she was protesting in a miniskirt in ‘79 as a freshman in college. And it went from that to full, thick black pants, long-sleeved shirts and a full hijab or chador by the time we get to 1981.
And women were still allowed in the stadium at the time, which they’d never been banned from. They go to the national soccer stadium, Azadi Stadium. At the time it was called Aryamehr. And the guards at the gate tell them they are no longer allowed inside the stadium, that they’ve been banned from all live soccer games. The guards laughed and said, ‘Actually, on top of this, this national stadium has been renamed. It’s called Azadi Stadium. That means Freedom Stadium, and you will never be allowed inside again.’ And for 40 years that remained true.
LIPOF:I find it interesting the podcast follows four decades of experiences of different women impacted by the ban. Why four decades?
OLIAEE:What I noticed was, in the ’80s, there was a certain way that women kept hope alive, and that was also during the Iraq-Iran war, and that was in secret spaces. It wasn’t in public spaces.
But by the ’90s, and this critical game that actually happens that we describe in the series, it’s a World Cup qualifying match between Australia and Iran. The entire country explodes with joy and women are part of it. So it’s the first time in the ’90s that you see women do things that are illegal for them to do and they break into Azadi Stadium and rip off their hijabs.
LIPOF: You also choose to showcase your personal experiences, being an Iranian-American. Let’s take a look.
OLIAEE, speaking on podcast: “I often felt like that — split in two. At school, I was ashamed of telling people where my family was from. It’s not like I was fully aware of what was happening in the world — what the Gulf War was, the Iranian hostage crisis. But growing up in the ’90s in Reno, Nevada, I knew being from the Middle East wasn’t something to be excited about.”
LIPOF:There are so many ways to tell a story. You know this. Why did you feel it was important to share your own personal experience?
OLIAEE:All the Iranian women in my family were the most intimidating people in my family. So I kind of didn’t understand why, in Western media, I was seeing a lot of repressed images of women in the Middle East. And also what I would see —
[Old footage plays on screen]
Yeah, that’s my mom coming back from a coed match. Look at her! Oh my gosh, she’s so funny. Look at her! She’s like, ‘I just scored a goal.’ She’s bragging about her great — Oh my gosh. Yeah, she was MVP on her team. She let me know that.
LIPOF:Something to be proud of.
OLIAEE:She’s very sporty.
But yeah, she loved soccer. She wouldn’t talk about the trauma from Iran. She would talk about soccer. And I saw all these strong Iranian women in my family. And when I would look to Western media to understand where I came from, I would see a lot of screaming men with beards and really bad eyebrows.
There was an image that had seeped into me as an American. I had misconceptions, and I actually wanted to replace the sounds of screaming men that were kind of seared into our brain through the hostage crisis with —
LIPOF: Pictures of your mom in her uniform.
OLIAEE:With my mom freaking out about her soccer game. I mean, in the last episode, she literally cannot focus on the revolution that’s happening right now, because she’s about to win her match.
So with that, the sound of joy. And all three generations of women that I interviewed who basically defied the regime, defied death in order to even speak about what had been happening the last 20 years. They shared their joy.
LIPOF:Just before we go, you talked about executions. And right now, there are people being executed. There are people who are going to be executed. How do you think the world should be reacting to what’s happening in Iran?
OLIAEE:I mean, this is what’s so hard. It’s so easy to turn away and distract ourselves from what’s happening. I think this is what I really want people to get from the podcast. When you hear this series, what you see is that the same tactics of the regime have been used for 40 years.
They lie, too. They say, ‘Oh, we’re not executing. Oh, we’ve banned the moral police.’ All of these other stories have come out in the last several weeks as these protests have taken over Iran.
And I think the lessons that the women learned are crucial lessons for women in every country. There’s so many ways that we can learn about what not to do and also what we need to do. And I hope that that’s what this series brings, is a little bit of clarity and wisdom for today — and courage.
LIPOF:Thank you so much for joining us. You can listen to the ESPN’s 30 for 30 podcast series. It is called “Pink Card” and it’s available now.
(WASHINGTON) — New York congressman-elect George Santos faces another legal complication as he is set to be sworn-in as a member of the House.
Prosecutors in Brazil are seeking to renew charges against Santos in relation to a 2008 criminal case, a spokesperson for the Rio de Janeiro prosecutor’s office tells ABC News.
The case involves Santos allegedly paying for goods with a stolen checkbook when he was 19, the prosecutor’s spokesperson said. He is accused of forging two checks for $400 to buy clothes for him and a friend, the spokesperson said.
Prosecutors intend to charge him with two counts for alleged fraud, including theft and the check forgery, with each count punishable by up to five years in prison, according to the spokesperson.
An official in the prosecutor’s office told ABC News, however, that the likely punishment if convicted would be a fine.
The Rio de Janeiro prosecutor’s office on Tuesday will petition the court to revive the charges, then notify the U.S. Justice Department about the case, the spokesperson said.
An attorney for Santos did not respond to multiple requests for comment from ABC News but told The New York Times: “I am in the process of engaging local counsel to address this alleged complaint against my client.”
In an interview with The New York Post last week, Santos flatly denied any legal wrongdoing.
“I am not a criminal here — not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world,” he said. “Absolutely not. That didn’t happen.”
Prosecutors in Brazil had suspended the case because they didn’t know where Santos, whose family is Brazilian, was living, the spokesperson said.
But that changed after Santos was elected in November to represent New York’s 3rd Congressional District, then made headlines because he admitted to embellishing or lying about parts of his background such as his education and work history.
A further timeline for the Brazilian case was not immediately clear.The Times reported that a charge was approved against Santos there in September 2011, though he was living in New York City that next month.
According to the Times, prosecutors will have to request that Santos respond. The case can move forward after he is notified, which will require Brazilian authorities to relay information through the Justice Department. Santos could also be tried in absentia — if he is not present in Brazil.
Separately, federal prosecutors in New York are looking into public filings by Santos amid questions about his wealth, sources previously told ABC News. The sources were careful not to characterize it as a formal investigation.
The New York attorney general is also looking at an animal rescue charity tied to Santos along with an address in Queens where Santos was registered to vote, sources have said.
In addition, the Nassau County district attorney’s office in New York is probing Santos, a spokesman for the office told ABC News, while the neighboring Queens County district attorney’s office is reviewing whether any crimes were committed, a spokesperson for that office said.
The embattled politician has said on Fox News that he is “not a fraud.”
“I believe that in order to move past this and move forward … I have to face my mistakes and I’m facing them,” Santos said in a December interview on Fox News.
Amid the controversy, he has said he intends to take his seat and serve his constituents. He declined to answer questions from reporters when he arrived on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
Privately, Santos has told local leaders he will not seek reelection in 2024, according to the Nassau County Republican Chairman Joseph G. Cairo Jr., who is in Santos’ district.
“I will be effective. I will be good,” Santos told The New York Post last week.
He and other members-elect will be sworn in after the new Congress convenes and elects a House speaker.
Reba McEntire‘s ready to drop The Hammer this Saturday.
That’s the name of the new Lifetime movie she both stars in and executive produced. In it, Reba plays colorful lawyer Kim Wheeler, who becomes a traveling judge in Nevada after the previous one died under suspicious circumstances.
Reba also reunites with her sitcom co-star Melissa Peterman, who plays her sister and the prime suspect in the former judge’s death. Reba’s real-life boyfriend, Rex Linn, is also in the film.
Check out the trailer to see why Reba’s character is nicknamed The Hammer. You can watch the full movie Saturday at 8 p.m. ET on Lifetime.
That’s not Reba’s only TV venture these days, of course: She continues to star in the latest season of Big Sky. You can check out a new episode Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.
Phoebe Bridgers‘ dad has died, the singer-songwriter announced Tuesday.
Bridgers revealed the news in an Instagram post, sharing a throwback picture of herself with pink hair alongside her late father.
“Rest in peace dad,” she captioned the snapshot.
The cause of death was not shared.
Bridgers, 28, has been open about her difficult relationship with her father in the past. In a 2019 GQ profile, she said her father had a “drug thing.” She also touched on her paternal relationship in 2020’s “Kyoto” from her Punisher album.
“You called me from a payphone / They still got payphones / It cost a dollar a minute / To tell me you’re getting sober / And you wrote me a letter / But I don’t have to read it,” she sings in the opening verse, later singing, “I don’t forgive you / But please don’t hold me to it / Born under Scorpio skies / I wanted to see the world / Through your eyes until it happened.”
Yes, girls just wanna have fun, but sometimes they just wanna learn about their family’s history. Cyndi Lauper is one of the celebrities featured on the new season of the PBS series Finding Your Roots.
The show’s ninth season premiered Tuesday night; Cyndi’s episode airs January 24 at 8 p.m. ET. In the episode, Cyndi shares the story of how her mother’s own dreams of music stardom were shattered by her stubborn Sicilian grandfather. Host Henry Louis Gates Jr. then uses historical records to give Cyndi a more complete picture of her Sicilian relatives, all the way back to the 1700s.
Gates also reveals information about one of Cyndi’s Swiss relatives on her father’s side, who took part in an important rebellion in the 1600s.
The same episode also features actors Danny Trejo and Jamie Chung exploring their backgrounds in, respectively, Mexico and Korea.
Other guests on Finding Your Roots this season include Carol Burnett, Niecy Nash, Viola Davis, David Duchovny, Joe Manganiello and Claire Danes.
Jax certainly started off 2023 on a high note: Not only did she perform on ABC’s Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest on December 31, her boyfriend popped the question and now they’re engaged. But the “Victoria’s Secret” singer has a few other goals for 2023 — though none of them, as she puts it, are “too grandiose.”
“An attainable one would be to hydrate, and I think I’m gonna try to sleep better and sleep through the night,” Jax told ABC Audio. “That’s it. I only set realistic ones these days, because the ones that I’ve tried to set that were too grandiose, I’ve always screwed up … halfway through January.”
On the professional side, though, might we expect an album from the TikTok star in 2023?
“I hope so. I’d love to release an album,” Jax told ABC Audio. She laughed, “I have enough songs for an album and then some, because I can’t decide on what I want to put out, just ’cause every time I’m in a mood, I just write songs, so hopefully.”
While we wait for that, “Victoria’s Secret” is still going strong and Jax has released several other singles that you can check out, like “Ring Pop,” “Like My Father” and “U Love U,” which features JVKE.
For years Beatles fans have blamed John Lennon’s wife Yoko Ono for breaking up the band, but a source close to the couple believes she was a scapegoat and Lennon is to blame for it.
Dan Richter, an 83-year-old artist and mime who lived with John and Yoko, working as their personal assistant from 1969 to 1973, reveals in a new interview with The Telegraph that he thinks John “used Yoko to help him break up The Beatles.”
“At that point John wanted The Beatles over with … It was a big problem for him: how do you break up The Beatles?” he shares. “They were worth millions of dollars [and] Paul was going to go on forever.”
Richter first shared his thoughts on the subject in the new podcast British Scandal – The Ballad of Yoko and John, but elaborates on it in The Telegraph interview, giving a prime example of how Lennon allegedly used his wife. He says that during the recording of Abbey Road, while Yoko was recovering from a car crash, John placed her “in this gigantic brass bed, all covered in white in a white night dress, right in the middle of the studio” in order to anger his bandmates.
“So sitting at the [mixing] board all you’re looking at is Yoko in a bed. The rest of the band were just appalled,” Richter shares. “John had decided he wasn’t going anywhere or doing anything without Yoko. So there she was, in bed in the studio.”
Gabrielle Union is opening up about her first marriage to NFL player Chris Howard.
The actress, who is currently married to NBA star Dwyane Wade, appeared on Monday’s episode of the Armchair Expert podcast and admitted that neither she nor Howard were faithful during their relationship.
“In our first marriage, neither one of us felt like the marriage should get in the way of our dating,” Union candidly told host Dax Shepard before implying that Howard was the one who initiated the idea. “A part of it was keeping up with his activities and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what you’re doing? Oh, you’re gonna feel this one.'”
Union went on to explain how, at the time, she felt justified in her actions, stating, “I just felt entitled to it, as well. I was paying all the bills. I was working my a** off and I felt like that’s what comes, the spoils of riches.”
“Like my dad before me, whoever has the most gets to do whatever the hell they want, is what I thought,” she said. “It was just dysfunctional from day one.”
“It was such a stupid relationship that should have never gotten out of the dating phase,” Union expressed. “We were gifted therapy and the first session, the therapist was like, ‘I don’t know how you guys made it out of the dating phase.’ And we should probably look for a way to amicably [divorce] because we have not one thing in common.”
Union and Howard separated in 2005 after four years of marriage. Their divorce was final in 2006. Union went on to marry Wade in 2014 after meeting in 2008.
